2012 Aggie Awards
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Honorary Aggies

Handing out awards is so much fun, once again we are pleased to acknowledge a few more games that distinguished themselves in notable ways. These honorary accolades may feel like a consolation prize for falling short of the highest goals, but we don't see it that way. Their purpose is to celebrate more ambiguous achievements not recognized by the main categories, each of which contributed to the wonderful genre diversity we enjoyed last year. The statues aren't golden, but silver's not bad!

Best of the Rest: The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

Aggie spoiler alert! The Testament of Sherlock Holmes won't be taking home any major awards this year, but not for lack of repeatedly coming close. After ten years of consistently 'good' Sherlock Holmes games, Frogwares finally gave us the mystery we'd been waiting for in 2012. A cross-platform release with multiple control schemes and user-friendly features to streamline any troublesome gameplay, this game appealed not only to its existing devoted fanbase but also to a whole new console audience. But above all, the surprising story of Sherlock's apparent fall from grace was thoroughly engaging right from the start and kept the momentum up through well-crafted characters and plenty of twists and turns. Topped off with stunning visuals and an impressive orchestral soundtrack, this was Frogwares at their finest. Though falling just a little short in individual categories, the game is certainly deserving of special acknowledgement, proving that a decade in the right hands can yield impressive results from a much loved franchise.

Best Game No One Has Played: The Sea Will Claim Everything

At first glance, The Sea Will Claim Everything looks like a children's cartoon, almost gaudy with its bold colours and thick outlines. And when you look closer, you'll find reading – lots and LOTS of reading. The first commercial game from Jonas Kyratzes has "acquired taste" written all over it, but stick with it and you'll find a fantastical world full of weird and wonderful places and people. The beautiful hand-drawn picture book illustrations suit the surreal Lands of Dream perfectly, and the clever writing reveals a wealth of detail to enjoy. Add a melodious soundtrack and a story that casts you as the saviour of the Fortunate Isles from a nefarious villain, and you end up with the genre's best kept secret. If you missed it the first time around (and we know you did), don't make the same mistake twice.

Most Promising Debut: Miasmata

This year saw a lot of debuts that fill us with hope for the next generation of adventure designers. While there were many fantastic games released this year by first-time developers, one stood out in terms of sheer audacity. Miasmata is a really weird game, one that refuses to give in to gamers’ expectations of how it should be played: an adventure game without “adventure game” puzzles, a horror game without combat, an open world game without a mini-map. Miasmata is a survival game that tracks your health, thirst, and energy level. It’s a game that requires you to navigate a massive island using landmarks and fill out your map via triangulation. It’s a game that lulls you into a trance with lush scenery and then throws a freaking invincible death tiger at you without warning. It’s also the best game about botany ever made. Keep your eyes peeled for more from the talented Johnson Brothers and their studio IonFX. We know we will.

Most Nostalgic Adventure: CYPHER: Cyberpunk Text Adventure

The first great adventure games involved walls of print that called upon the player's ability to inhabit the fiction and imagine its world and the events playing out solely through text, while solving its many puzzles by responding in kind. While we had several impressive '90s-era retro adventures released this year, the Cabrera Brothers' CYPHER: Cyberpunk Text Adventure took us even farther back to the earliest genre days, but this time the text was displayed within a gorgeous illustrated frame using audio/visual elements to enhance the writing on-screen. Though far from perfect, CYPHER reminded us how intimate and immersive text adventures could be. It may not be enough to bring interactive fiction back to prominence, but it was enough to offer a welcome bit of nostalgia with a slightly modern twist.

Most Progressive Adventure: Alt-Minds

Imagine a game where you and your friends work together to solve the disappearance of a group of students. While one of you tracks down the license plate of a van, another finds the name of their colleague on Facebook and sends a message that's soon answered. Another can search the internet for a car rental agency based on a logo recalled by their apartment landlord, and the proprietor, when contacted in real life, reveals the amount of gas they used and the number of suitcases they carried, allowing you to use Google maps to plot possible target locations such as an airport or a railway station. Sound impossible? Not with Alt-Minds. Building on the already-ambitious premise of MISSING/In Memoriam, Lexis Numérique created a multiplayer, real-time mystery investigation with daily puzzles and tasks to overcome across a variety of platforms and media. Like many innovative projects, this nine-week experiment encountered some unexpected difficulties and international participation was limited, but for its sheer boldness of vision, there were no games more progressive in design than this.

Best "Almost" Adventure: Home, Dear Esther (tie)

Exactly how much gameplay does there need to be to make a game a... game? There's no definitive answer to that question, but we felt that Benjamin Rivers's Home and thechineseroom's Dear Esther were ultimately more interactive stories than adventure games. But that doesn't mean they aren't deserving of your attention. On the surface the two are strikingly different: Home uses a retro pixel-art aesthetic in dimly lit city locations, while Dear Esther was given a graphical overhaul from its freeware origins to depict a stunningly realistic island setting. Look deeper, however, and they are really quite similar. Both gam... uh, both whatevers are brilliant examples of surreal, interpretational narratives driven almost exclusively by exploration. There are no puzzles to solve and no real challenge, but piecing together their fractured, possibly tragic storylines is a puzzle in its own right that most adventure gamers would embrace.

Reading through the first five pages, I was kind of shocked how everything matched my votes, but fortunately the last two categories diverged from mine. The story award for The Cat Lady came especially as a surprise, since I expected The Walking Dead to win, but it was my favourite as well.

I picked Sherlock for gameplay, because of the variety in its puzzles, but Resonance was actually my runner up and I haven’t played Papa and Yo for lack of a Playstation, so my concept of the year went to Resonance.

The most important award there for me was that Resonance won the award for Best Gameplay - that’s where to me it’s one of the best (maybe THE best) adventure I’ve ever played. It did that, so I don’t mind about the other results. I did vote for it too for Best Writing, but it was the puzzle design & innovations with Short & Long term memory that really made it stand out.

Agree with A.A. re Cognition but ultimately I felt that Resonance was better than it in most of the relevant categories, so I only voted for it once or twice myself. I do hope it wins something though.

I think Cognition deserves a win for Best Music. It’s the best I’ve heard in any game from 2012!

Looks like The Walking Dead will win most of the categories in Reader’s Choice. Not a surprise since more people have played it than any other game and that it has a lasting impression. I still feel a bit bad about siding with Kenny in the storage room!

Great to see Resonance win, although that one is still on my “to play” list. And to be honest I had never heard about The Cat Lady before. Good thing that you highlight unknown games like this! I have now voted on The Cat Lady on Steam Greenlight, hope it fares well.

I agree with the awards so far (little sad that Botanicula didn’t win for music but I haven’t played Cognition so the least I can do is check the soundtrack). And I’m especially happy that Resonance and Primordia won the awards that they absolutely deserve. Haven’t played The Walking Dead yet so I can’t judge the awards it got but phew indeed that it didn’t win the gameplay award

I love such year end lists, they highlight the stuff I should pay closer attention to, in this case The Cat Lady and Primordia.

One question: How come Journey was never reviewed? Did it simply fall through the cracks? It’s quite a surprise to see that it counts as an adventure game for the Aggie awards. I wouldn’t have an opinion on that, haven’t played it, but it felt odd after the lack of a review.

Walking dead is reallyreallyreally overrated, yes it’s an entertaining game, but it’s soooo linear.. It delievers more or less nothing but an illusion that the player is participating in the development of the story.. Intriguing story for the moment (but nothing that lasts).. I actually enjoyed The Walking Dead but I’m starting to dislike it because of this exaggeration within giving it ZzZzzo much attention. Edna and Harvey is forgotten in this context but I’m glad that Resonance was honored for “best indie game”

I fully second that. One thing that’s really good about the Aggies is that although there is a clear winner (the GOTY) other games get recognition as well. And this is already the case since the beginning. I don’t think we’ve had a year yet, where the GOTY also won all the other awards as well.

No Jackal, didn’t mean to be that negative about the results. In my opinion Walking Dead won more than it deserved, for example Cat lady has way better writing. Also I feel Edna and Harvey should get way more attention. Still, I can’t argue with the fact that Deponia won cause I haven’t played it..

This Year Aggies was A Battle Between Adventures from Indies Devs and established ones and sadly the established got the share of the lion .. and i say that because at least the AG Staff Choice should had considered the Interdependent (hell of) Work behind games Such games as Cat Lady Primordia and Resonance (Vince12 had 6 years of his life dedicated for this One!).. but life never fair ? ...

Sorry Jack, i am not debating here i just feeling sad for the people who made Great Adventures this Year but because they hadn’t got the updated outlook they were considered not up to the big price .. i wish judging had been more academically than commercially.

Well, while the users voted an awful lot for Resonance and The Walking Dead, the staff itself had quite a bit of variation in their awards. WD didn’t really get all that much votes and it isn’t all that strange that it won both the unconventional and best adventure of the year.

The slight lack of variation in user votes is probably because the most popular adventures of the year garner the most votes by virtue of them having been played by most people. Games like The Cat Lady, The Sea Will Claim Everything. Primordia etc. can’t compete in such a situation. Not necessarily for a lack of quality, but because quite a few people won’t have played them before casting their vote.

But as I mentioned before, 2012 was a really good year for adventures with lots of variation between games and there wasn’t really any game that excelled in everything for me. The Aggies reflect this as well, with quite a few different games popping up in the awards, especially in the first two days. And there was virtually no filler in the nominations, with practically every game deserving its spot.

And having played practically every worthwhile adventure released last year besides Harvey 2, as I want to play the first game first, I largely agree with the awards and gave a few votes to The Walking Dead as well. I just really enjoyed its characters, story and tense moments. The choices were also great in how they determined who/which Lee you were and how other characters saw you, not necessarily in how they affected the overall plot.

And my votes didn’t always line up with the results, but because of the degree of variation in the games and the overall quality there were always several worthy winners for the categories. As such, I don’t think you should look at the end results too hard, as it might have been a flip of the coin that decided it in the end or the mood of the day as it did for me in several instances. I find it hard at least, to choose between such games as Deponia, Botanicula, The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, The Sea Will Claim Everything, The Cat Lady, Resonance, Primordia, The Walking Dead, as they all excel in different things, have different moods, different kind of gameplay etc. Which is also the reason that I don’t really try to make any best of lists. It’s already hard enough to rank excellent games within genres, now how am I supposed to compare RPGs, shooters, sims, adventures etc..

Credit where credit’s due…when you first play The Walking Dead, it FEELS like your choices matter. That’s still a pretty impressive accomplishment, even if on a second playthrough, it’s evident they don’t change an awful lot of the story.

But after playing Heavy Rain, it did disappoint in the choices department.

Advie, I have no idea what awards you’re looking at, but it can’t be the Aggies. All three of the games you mentioned won awards, as did several other indies. If you’re really just complaining about The Walking Dead, two of its five awards were for best writing and character(s)—categories that have nothing at all to do with budget or team size—and those were the main reason it won the other three.

Diego, not all non-traditional games are interactive movies. I’m not even sure most of them are.

Thanks Jack for Reply!.... but what I meant was the game of the year (the Big Price) i think it was expected for that the readers choice is going for TWD but i thought that you and the Staff would consider the hard work behind those other three(Indies) .. or at least out of honoring them, so it would look like this; readers enjoyed/chosen the walking dead but AG choice was judged/picked far away from sales or success only just by covering all its elements ... you sure know the difference between The Oscars and The Grammy Awards (something like that)... and again i am not complaining or debating i just pointing out at something that got me disappointed , and that’s OK i guess .. its just me in the end (one man point of view)

Sales and success had nothing to do with our decisions, but nor did the supposed amount of effort or obstacles faced by the developer. All those are nice to point out, but just like our reviews, only quality matters in the end.

And I think it’s very wrong to assume that one person’s part-time efforts for five years is somehow more worthy of respect than 30 people’s full-time efforts for a single year. (Not real numbers.) I suspect if Telltale’s developers were asked, they’d say they all worked their butts off for many long hours, with every bit as much care invested to make their games the best they could be.

Big team or small, if the result is good, it’s because of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it that made it that way.

I’ve always found the the-developers-put-their-sweat-blood-and-tears-in-this-game-so-you-should-appreciate-it kind of argument weird. I’ve seen it before and it doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s great that they show so much devotion to their project, but it doesn’t matter a single iota to my enjoyment of the end product. For the viewer, reader, player, listener the only thing that really matters is the quality. Now, I celebrate the fact that small teams are able to rival or surpass big developers with their stories, characters, gameplay or sometimes even graphics and most of the games I play are actually indie (not only adventures, but also other genres and the past several years, my GotY went to independent productions), because they are often more interesting, challenging or otherwise different from the so-called AAA-games, but if a big budget game is better it’s simply just that. I’m not going to subtract or add points based on the hours invested per person or the size of the team. And I guess this goes for most people as I never encounter the following exchange: “Why did you like that game (more than another game)?” “Well, the story was good, the character development was outstanding, I loved the puzzles, and the developer spent long hours on the development.”

As for honouring the independent developer*. As has been mentioned before there are quite a few rewards going out to the indies, and Resonance won the traditional award, which is also a biggie. I also feel that the story award for The Cat Lady and gameplay for Resonance are big ones when compared to many of the other categories that aren’t as important to me. There is certainly no shortage of rewards and nominations for indies, and they’ve all been awarded because of their particular merits. It would have been different if every nomination had gone to a big budget game, which of course is quite hard for adventures, but does happen in other awards where indies are often truly snubbed, robbed and neglected and money talks.

I guess I’m also not that invested in which game won GotY because of aforementioned reasons (see post a bit higher up). Especially for the GotY-award people should look at all the nominations and not merely the end result, as they are all great games that deserve to be played. Only one can be the winner, but I feel that’s very trivial in such a great year. I’m already glad that there is as much diversity in the awards as there was in adventure games last year.

Now, the only thing I’m quite confused about is the user vote for the Walking Dead for best concept. That doesn’t make much sense to me, especially when there were quite a few adventures that introduced fresh ideas (perfectly reflected in this site’s nominations) and I had to do a double take when I read that. It just never crossed my mind that TWD was even a contender for that category.

*Isn’t Telltale also an independent developer, depending on your definition of it, albeit larger than most? But I guess we shouldn’t enter into a discussion about what is indie and what isn’t. We would never escape its murky depths)

The Walking Dead is hardly a surprise as Best Adventure, given the many awards it has already won, and the many players that love it. (even if i personally disagree)

I am however very happy that the AG Staff showed more variation then the users, and didn’t “let” TWD win in every category it could possible be consider eligible for. (Seriously TWD as Best Concept ?!?)

My only real disapointment is that Harvey’s New Eyes didn’t even get an Honourary, but i guess that is the nature of awards. Not every great game can win something, and there was many great Adventure Games in 2012.

I think Journey is a lovely, beautiful and unique game, but if you think that platforming is easy, you need to check your privilege, because you’re obviously a competent platformer!

I’m not a platform gamer, I don’t have the precision or skill, and I barely got through Journey. Worst level for me was the Pagoda level, where my poor companion stood there trying to show me how to do the jumps and waited patiently while I struggled my way up again, showed me again, until he gave up and finished the level, so that I only had to struggle with the top part platforming (the cloud kept lifting me up), where I still fell down and had to do everything again over 5 times until I finally figured out the floating technique.

If I hadn’t played it many, many months after its release and didn’t meet some many competent, patient and skilled companions as I did, I don’t think I’d gotten through it. I’d never have to patience to wait over half an hour for me to try and fail, and then try and fail again some more to get me through the level!

Then I went and got my entire scarf eaten in the monster area, and spent over an hour trying to get a new scarf bit in the underwater area.

Finishing the game with only a tiny scarf is really hard, you have to recharge all the time, and you have no leeway on the jumps.

What really segments it as a platformer for me is how harshly it punishes you for failing. In the Cave you just poof up again, when I missed the jump in the near end winter-area, I fell all the way down and had to do the whole level again, three times(!) until I finally figured out that I didn’t need to jump, the companion I followed were just going for the achievement (“jump the ravine without completing the bridge”).

All in all the environment, hint of a story (I don’t think telling bits of the story as reward for finishing a level can qualify as story-heavy) and unique experience made it a positive experience for me, even though I struggled the whole way, and it’s a game I would like to play again, but because of the multiplayer I wont, because I feel like I’m hampering and being a burden on the other players experience, instead of adding to it.

For me, even though it is a beautiful, engaging, open-world experience, it fills all the “demands” for a platformer: It requires precision and skill, the gameplay is integral to everything; exploring, progressing, solving puzzles and the game has clear levels you progress though one at a time, ending each with a “reward”, here with a story element you only get by completing that level’s requirements.

If there was one game I played on the Playstation 3 this year I’d consider an adventure it would be the unfinished Swan.

Please AG would you add a page with full spoiler list to all the awards ?

... Thaaaaaanks for the GREAT efforts (and whether someone agrees with all the results or not) i am honored to be a member (and also a previously Staff member) here at the one and only page that reliably decides the current state of the adventure gaming all around the world !!.

Personally I’m thrilled to see The Walking Dead and Resonance clean up. They’re not just the best two adventure games I’ve played this year, they’d both make my top 10 list of ALL TIME.

And that’s not something that I could say about any other adventure game since The Longest Journey was released 13 years ago.

I haven’t yet played some of these other games, but expecting them to place on my top 10 list of all time would be a stretch.

And for those bashing TWD, I was so emotionally involved in its story by its end that it made me weep like a baby. No other game in my 20+ years of video game playing has ever made me shed a single tear, but this one literally made me weep. That’s quite an accomplishment.

What a great year for adventure games. Certainly the best since the late 90s. And with all the games funded by Kickstarter coming out this year, the future of adventure games looks very bright for the first time in a very long time.